Thought for the Day - Monday 31 August

 Thought for the Day – Monday 31^st August

‘We can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; what can anyone do to me?’’. (Hebrews 13: 6)

My dentist phoned the other day to say that they were now resuming check-ups and treatments and wanted to arrange my next appointments for both the hygienist and the dentist. I don’t know about you but the dentist is not my favourite place to visit, even though the dentist I now have is absolutely great and has worked wonders on my previously wonky teeth, I am still haunted by a childhood experience of the dentist and not quite being asleep while some work was going on; an experience which has left me with an absolutely terrible phobia of masks due to those big black masks they used to put you to sleep at that time!!

So you sit there in the waiting room – well not now Covid-19 is around – you sit outside in the car waiting and think to yourself – don’t be daft – ‘What can any other human being do to me? What can anyone do to me?’ I always end up saying, ‘Well actually they can do a great deal!’

Really though my visits to the dentist are not so dreadful – as I said I have a good dentist now – it is usually all down to irrational fears and imagined experiences isn’t it?

We often ask ‘What can anyone do to me?’ when we are fearful and think we are going to suffer. As I said while a trip to the dentist may not be so fearful nowadays or inflict great suffering on us we only have to look to the Bible to see the atrocities people inflicted on God’s people and others in the past such as stoning, sawing in half, persecuting and tormenting and, in fact, we only need look to our own world today to see how people can still inflict great suffering on others. So many humans can bring suffering to their fellow humans.

We must not think that being a Christian does not exempt us from physical suffering either – for many in some countries it is the very fact that they are Christian which brings them suffering or leads to their death.

Also if we see faith as some kind of insurance policy bringing us health and happiness, then we may just be in for a disappointment because even as people of faith we can all still experience suffering, although I have to say, we do also believe that God gives us the strength we need when we need it to endure any suffering - as he has on countless occasions for his people.

Really though I think that the writer of Hebrews here has something more in mind than our immediate fate when he so confidently states ‘What can anyone do to me?’ I think he is talking more of our eternal destiny.

He knew as Christians we would have suffering and trials and yet he knew also the promises of God to his people and I think that is why he writes as he does and with such confidence. 

None of us know what we may face in this world, whether good or ill, trivial of serious, but what we do know is that God’s love is with us, not just now, not just in our actual moments of suffering or fear, or even in those moments when we anticipate or imagine suffering or fear, but for all eternity and absolutely nothing will ever be able to undermine that promise to us.

So, knowing this we too can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; what can anyone do to me?’

Prayer

 

Loving Lord,

We pray this day that you would give us confidence in your eternal promise; and in all moments of suffering or fear, or when we dread something to come imagining it to be what it may not be, that you would be with us, our helper, helping us to know that you are there, bringing us through such moments and leading us forward in faith. We pray too, that we may we never knowingly bring suffering or fear to others but rather take your love and your eternal promise to all. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.